[A B.A.N. documentary tells the story of the Blackest movie ever
made]
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PORTSIDE CULTURE

ATLANTA DROPS ITS MOST DARING EPISODE YET  
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Quinci LeGardye
October 27, 2022
AV Club
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_ A B.A.N. documentary tells the story of the Blackest movie ever
made _

Donald Glover as Earn Marks, Photo: Matthias Clamer/FX

 

_Atlanta_ [[link removed]] has already
proven that it can pull off any concept or format change it damn well
pleases, but this week takes its chameleonic strengths to a whole
other level. If you’ve come to this recap without watching yet,
please go watch it now, because this, like “B.A.N.
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and “Teddy Perkins
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is one of _the_ episodes to experience with as little knowledge as
possible. “The Goof Who Sat By The Door” is _Atlanta_’s most
daring and thematically-impressive episode yet, as it creates a
revisionist history for the Blackest film of the Disney Renaissance.

For everyone who didn’t previously know that the Black community
claims _A Goofy Movie_, here’s an article
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out all the details that resonate with Black millennial fans (and
an academic paper
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anyone who’s about to comment, “Why bring race in? It’s a
cartoon,” here’s an interview
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touches on why kids of color have historically glommed on to Black-
and POC-coded characters when there weren’t any actual cartoons with
characters of color. Read those and internalize that Goofy being
subjectively Black makes many people happy and hurts literally no one.
That’s all the hand-holding I’m going to do. Goofy and Max are
Black; let’s move on.

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Atlanta [[link removed]]

The Goof Who Sat by the Door (Season 4, Episode 8)
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Comedy/Drama/Music

Grade

A

CAST

Donald Glover

Earnest 'Earn' Marks

Brian Tyree Henry

Alfred 'Paper Boi' Miles

LaKeith Stanfield

Darius

Zazie Beetz

Van

Khris Davis

Tracy

RJ Walker

Clark County

Though there have been articles about the Blackness of _A Goofy
Movie_, it’s still a subject that mostly lives within Black online
circles. Instead of just including it as a joke and a nod, or even a
catalyst for a character’s episode arc, like the “Crank Dat
Killer,” Glover, who directs this faux-doc, and writers Francesca
Sloane and Karen Joseph Adcock use expert storytelling to make this
behind-the-scenes look at how Disney produced something so Black at a
time where all-white animation teams were first awkwardly trying
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introduce diversity into their films.

If it wasn’t for the return of the Black American Network, I
would’ve thought that I’d somehow turned on the wrong show. There
have now been several episodes of _Atlanta_ that haven’t featured
a single member of the main cast, but “Goof” sticks with an
extremely Black subject that calls back to the show’s first
standalone episode, season two’s coming-of-age piece “FUBU
[[link removed]].”
The faux-doc is a brilliant homage to the format, with Glover building
a very serious piece of work about an alternate reality where Disney
had its first Black CEO. The only connection to Atlanta is the literal
city as Thomas “Tom” Washington’s (Eric Berryman) hometown, and
it’s not outwardly trying for laughs, with the humor coming through
within the details. “Goof” is such a huge leap, but it works so
well within the show as a whole and season 4’s theme of reckoning
with legacy and power once an artist gets a taste of success.

Tom Washington’s story is heartbreaking in a very familiar way, and
it reminded me of other docs about Black luminaries who dealt with
mental-health struggles and substance abuse issues. It’s also just a
classic nerd story, starting with Washington being bullied by his
peers and struggling with not fitting in (that too-common moniker of
“acting white”). He finds his joy in cartoons, and eventually goes
to art school to become an animator. No one really understands him but
his professors, who see his potential in his student projects
like_ The Lil’ Prince _(actually featuring Prince) and a series of
Goofy portraits in the same vein of the “Damn, you live like this
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(which later gets a shoutout). Eventually, he gets a job at Disney,
where he probably would’ve had a career similar to Floyd Norman if a
bunch of white men paid more attention to Thomas vs. Thompson.

The arc of Washington’s life plays out very realistically, except
for Washington getting into the CEO seat in the first place. Once he
does, his office at the Disney lot becomes the Black gathering ground
of Hollywood, as he begins his journey to turn _A Goofy Movie_ into
a tale of Black acceptance and liberation told through a bond between
a father and son. The explanations of Washington’s vision for the
film are wild (the heart of what Black people love about the film is
there, but the map as the Green Book is a bit of a stretch), and
eventually he becomes obsessed, making illustrators redraw daps until
their fingers bleed and sending white animators to cookouts where
they’d get their asses beat. And he still had to deal with the
Disney machine, who wanted to put “that white boy” Mickey in the
film.

This faux-documentary about a man who never existed also builds a lot
of empathy for the subject by bringing in Washington’s family to
round out his character. They’re able to speak to the sides of the
man who the white Disney employees didn’t know, and the differences
in the ways they respond to his jokes and the cultural details bring
half the episode’s comedy. It’s also lovely how the relationship
between he and his son mirrors Goofy and Max, solidifying the thought
that the movie is a love letter from father to son. This also makes
his slow unraveling from corporate and community pressure even sadder,
especially once we get to his filmed breakdown and the recounting of
his broken Goofy laugh.

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In the end, Washington was pushed out of his role, and _The Goofy
Movie_ of _Atlanta_ lore matches the real-life version, Bigfoot
scene and all. To be fair, ending the animated kids film with
the _Get Out_ alternate ending
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have been a bad call, but I really wonder how much his version would
have been different, or what other projects he would have worked on if
his car didn’t end up at the bottom of a Burbank lake. “Goof”
and last week’s installment, “The Snipe Hunt
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are the types of episodes that leave you sitting quietly in thought
instead of choking on laughter, and _Atlanta_ will go down as one of
the best shows of the early twenty-first century because it can
deftly deliver on both comedy and drama. I’m excited to rewatch and
sit with this episode for a long time, enjoying the Blackest
documentary about the Blackest movie of all time.

Stray observations

* I did a quick dive into the history of Goofy for this (as well as
watching _A Goofy Movie_, cause I hadn’t seen more than the
“I.2.I” scene in at least nine years), and for anyone who still
wants to say Goofy wasn’t designed after Black stereotypes: For his
first appearance in 1932’s “Mickey’s Revue,” dude was an
audience member named Dippy Dawg who annoyed everyone by laughing
loudly and crunching on peanuts.
* Also, Powerline was supposed to be voiced by Bobby Brown! He
was reportedly
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by Campbell near the end of production, but the character was already
designed to look like the “bad boy of R&B.”
* Sloane and Adcock’s integration of fictional details into the
events of the time is so seamless at points that most of my notes
were just reminders to look up what was real and what was imagined.
(“Analysis of the Goof”? Real
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Michael Eisner taking a break during his 21-year stint as CEO? Not
real, from what I could find.)
* Either “I.2.I. [[link removed]]” or “Can We
Talk [[link removed]]” is gonna be
stuck in your head for the next week. You’re welcome. (Also, how
cool would it have been if they actually got Tevin Campbell.)
* Kids will make fun of you for anything (and Tom’s mom was wise).
* Mickey does show up during the “On The Open Road
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* This screener came out late, so I wasn’t able to sit with the
episode for a day or get into as much research as usual. I’m excited
to hear from anyone who’s more familiar with the history of Disney
animation and its history in the comments! 

* Atlanta
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* Black culture
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* coded culture
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* Disney
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* race
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* Goofy
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